By Maria Cheng<\/p>\n
OTTAWA, June 11 (Reuters) – Canada will invest more than C$1 billion ($715.72 million) to promote competition among grocers and food processors, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday, adding that efforts to combat high \u200cfood inflation would also enhance national security.<\/p>\n
Canada has one of the highest food inflation rates among Group of \u200cSeven countries and just five companies dominate 75% of its grocery market. Voters are increasingly concerned about spiking grocery prices.<\/p>\n
Carney said the investment into food \u200bterminals and hubs would help independent grocers compete by making it easier to buy from farmers and food processors, while also strengthening Canada’s food security.<\/p>\n
“To protect our sovereignty and take control of our future, we must take control of our food system,” Carney said at Canada’s biggest food terminal in Toronto. He said the country has an “overreliance” on foreign markets for essential foods and that the growing \u200cseasons in Canada are too short for \u2060farmers to keep up with demand.<\/p>\n
To address those and other issues, Carney announced an additional C$1 billion fund to back food and farming projects. He said the broader food strategy would lower \u2060prices by removing regulatory barriers and increase competition among grocery stores.<\/p>\n
According to April data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada had the second-highest rate of food inflation among G7 countries in April after Japan, at 3.8%. In comparison, Germany and the U.S. \u200breported food \u200binflation rates of 1.5% and 2.9%, respectively.<\/p>\n
Polls have shown voters want \u200bCarney, who has made a name for himself \u200con the global stage by seeking to make Canada less dependent on the United States, to focus more on cost of living issues.<\/p>\n
In January, Carney announced that Canada\u2019s 12 million poorest people would get a tax credit for the next five years to help offset the price of groceries, in addition to C$500 million to help businesses deal with supply chain disruptions and to allow producers to write off greenhouse expenses.<\/p>\n
Michael von Massow, a professor of food agriculture and economics at the University \u200cof Guelph, welcomed the government\u2019s new strategy but warned it was unlikely \u200bto lower grocery prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is that most of the things that are \u200bcausing food price inflation are beyond the control \u200bof the federal government,\u201d he said, naming climate change, extreme weather events and volatile geopolitics as major \u200cproblems.<\/p>\n
According to data this month from the pollster \u200bAngus Reid, 44% of Canadians say \u200bthey are finding it hard to pay for their weekly groceries.<\/p>\n
Shachi Kurl, president of polling firm Angus Reid, said the strategy is likely an effort by Carney to address the daily concerns of Canadians.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Prime Minister is \u200brightly focused on things like AI, trade policy \u200cand national unity, but the larger issue for most Canadians is that two out of five of \u200bthem are struggling at the checkout to make the grocery bill fit what they can afford,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
($1 = \u200b1.3972 Canadian dollars)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Maria Cheng; Editing by Nia Williams)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maria Cheng OTTAWA, June 11 (Reuters) – Canada will invest more than C$1 billion ($715.72 million) to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,2998,51601,263136,9294,41525,58646,2659,44],"class_list":["post-730649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-food","tag-food-inflation","tag-food-processors","tag-food-security","tag-grocery-prices","tag-inflation-rates","tag-mark-carney","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}